Ep. 1: Starting Fresh - Where Does Your Turkey Call Come From?
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Hi, I'm Jason Phelps, and I'm the new host of Cutting the Distance. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I've been hunting for about as long as I can remember. It didn't take long, though, for my love of hunting to turn into a love of calling animals in. This obsession ultimately led me to starting Phelps Game Calls back in 2009. Since then, I've learned damn near everything there is to know about building calls, as well as how to use them effectively in the field. Get them close. That's always been my mantra. In my opinion, there isn't a more exciting way to hunt.

So in this podcast, we're going to cover everything about using the calls, everything about the hunting tactics that surround using the calls, as well as times when using calls just isn't the right thing to do. So how do we get there? We get there through questions from you. We get there by leveraging my own personal experience, which is going to include a lot of failures and a lot of success. And we get there through conversations with experts on topics we are tackling and discussing. Now, without further ado, let's dive right in.

Turkey season is right around the corner, so on this first episode of Cutting the Distance with Jason Phelps, it's all about turkeys. Today I'll be discussing a project my good buddy Steven Rinella and I have been working on for the past year, as well as dive into some of Steve's personal tips and tactics to help you harvest a turkey this season. Alright, one of the big components of this podcast is going to be your questions, the users, the listeners' questions.

Um, since this is the first episode, we're going to go to Steve for a user generated question. Okay. I got a question about the questions though. How do people submit questions? So I'm going to submit stuff all the time. You're going to be like, just do it again. You know, like on Facebook, how you get like number one, top fan or like the top user, you're going to, you're going to have that at the, okay, perfect. That's how I'm going to find, that's how I'm going to find it. I'll be like, so we're going to scour all of our social media channels, Instagram, Facebook,

We're going to also have an email set up, ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com if you have any specific questions you want us to try to hit on. And then they can put feedback in there too. Yeah, if you really like that. That's so stupid. Yeah, but no, we're wanting just more positive feedback. If you have negative feedback, you can send it to Steve. Yeah, you don't want Jason to get deflated. Here's my question. Ready? Ready. I'm not sending. I'm not emailing. I'm just going to tell you right now. Okay, mic to mic. It's a three-part, but they're quick.

What's the longest you've ever seen a diaphragm call last? How do most people ruin them? And like, how do you take care of them in storm? Okay. Number one, I can remember, I can remember this call. It was a purple piece of tape.

had a star on it because that was my number one call and i took i babied that call um i think i got four or five years out of it competition calling and everything no kidding yeah baby see i thought you're gonna say like 18 months no no when this call when i knew it just it hit and it did everything it was supposed to without me having to try too hard i put a star on it i would take it out of the fridge take it to my contest use it take it home wash it with some cold water let it dry on the counter put it back in the fridge

So that one call. So that sort of answers how you take care of a little bit. Yeah. But there's. Oh, then hit me with like how to what's the most besides setting? No, it could be because I've cooked a couple. Yeah. Leaving them on your dashboard is 95 degrees. Dashboard is I mean, because you get the, you know, the window, you know, basically turn into magnifying glass, hitting your latex. Yeah. Even without the glass. I mean, you put that thing in the sun for two or three days and it's shot.

You put it in front of the glass on a 90 degree day and it's done in a day. What about washing machine? You ran it through a washing machine? Washing machine, it's...

It just depends. Sometimes it'll just toast them. Sometimes they're perfectly fine. What about a clothes dryer? Clothes dryer, no good. If you run it through a clothes dryer, you might as well pitch it. Yeah, it usually separates the glue on the tape as well as the heat just kind of tears up the latex. But it might survive a washing machine. It could, yep. We've had calls survive the washing machine that fall out in the bottom, pick them up, and they're just as good as the day I built them. Have you ever seen one survive like a dude –

leaves his in his bino harness or whatever the hell. I don't know. Leaves it in his... Okay, I got it. Leaves it in his turkey vest. So late May comes around, turkey vest goes into a corner of the closet. Next year he's like, shit, where's my... Oh, there it is.

It's probably going to be good. It's probably fine. Yeah, no sun. And then as long as you don't put it through like extreme heat cycles, they're usually pretty good. So in a shaded like room temp closet, it's not a death sentence. Yeah. So turkey coals are different though because usually they're made up of multiple layers, two, three, sometimes even four layers. You get your saliva all stuck between the layers. And if it kind of dries in there, you get some different issues. Yeah.

Um, you know, a lot of people make, you know, tooth toothpick or they make reed spacers so you can get like a little bit of airlift in there to let all those layers dry out. Um, so tricky call, as long as it's kind of allowed to dry properly, um, it should be fine. And then your turkey vest over, you know, from year to year. And you do want to get the spit off them. Yeah. Ideally, you know, there's just bacteria and stuff in your mouth that, that breaks that latex down. Yeah. Um, you know, sugars, coffees, you know,

choose, you know, snooze, whatever may be in your mouth. It just creates a bad environment for that latex. Oh, buddy of mine, he always, uh, my neighbor, he always, I don't know why or how he always brings atomic fireballs.

Hunting? Yep. It's just his thing. You got to walk a long ways. He pops in an atomic fireball. So I was out with him. Yeah. And I was feeling like, I feel like an atomic fireball is not good for your diaphragm. No, no. Cinnamon, you know, I've got to imagine that's going to tear it down. It's not even good for your tongue, dude. No, I haven't did a specific study on atomic fireballs, but it can't be good.

Um, store in the fridge. Store in the fridge. Um, wash it, dry it off on the counter for a couple hours away from a window, away from the sun. Um, and then. Oh, don't lay it in the window. Yeah. And then, uh, cold, uh, dark place is the best. Um, you know, we even recommend if it's going to be a while and you can throw it in the freezer, it's not going to hurt it. Oh, really? Let it actually freeze. Kills bacteria that way too. If there was anything, any residual on there versus in the fridge, it could potentially, you know.

Continue on. I got one more then. Is there anything... There's no such thing as a warranty on a diaphragm, right? Because it's sort of meant as not a thing that lasts forever. Yeah. Like a warranty on a toothbrush. Yeah. I mean, we've always looked at diaphragms as consumable. Yeah. So it's even tough for somebody to say, I've had a call for a month and the latex is cracking. I don't know what that person did for a month, right? Mm-hmm. But there is...

If something's obviously, you know, tape falls off, we usually try to take care of people. We listen, you know, story by story. I'm not giving you an example. So you might look and be like, this is something that was wrong on our end. Yeah, this could be a manufacturing defect. You know, I'm not going to lie. Like we look at that customer about $100 in calls and he's only complaining about one.

You know, so it's obviously not the guy just trying to take us. Yeah, I got you. You know, so whether people want to hear that or not, like that's how we look at it. Like it's obviously, you know, or did somebody buy one call and that one call's, you know, mysteriously bad after two weeks. Like, you know, hey, here's a 40% off code. Like, you know. Yeah, got you. I don't know. We play it case by case. We never try to, you know, decide before we hear all the information. Got it.

So that could have been the listener right there. That could have been. Asking all those questions. Yeah, if you have similar questions to Steve's, make sure to submit them to us, CTD at Phelps Game Calls or any of our social channels. We'll try to round those up and put them into the next few podcasts and get them answered for you. Perfect. ♪

Alright, so we've been talking about turkey calls for a long time, back ever since we started working together. And your idea was probably like, I'd say two or three on my crazy ass ideas I either didn't want to do or didn't think were going to work when you brought this to me. It was this idea that we were going to go somewhere, find a tree, a tree that was perfect for making turkey calls out of. We were going to go cut that tree down, not somebody else. Okay.

not, you know, not the lumber yard. Nobody's going to source it. Nobody's going to buy it. We're going to cut that tree down. We're going to tell the story of that tree, the, the property, um, the process that that tree had to go to, uh, or, or go through, um, in order to become a turkey call, um, which I think a lot of, you know, your idea, I believe I'm putting words in your mouth, but was the idea that people don't know the process that a tree goes through to become a turkey call and everything involved, um, and then tell that story. So, uh,

you brought me this idea. I didn't like it. Yeah, but I need to understand. I'll tell you why I liked it, but I need to understand what was the problem with it? It just disrupts my system, right? So my idea as a game call maker was you go to the lumber yard or you log on to, you know, some specialty hardwood supplier. You order your 1,000 board feet of lumber and it shows up perfect, ready to be built. Mint condition. You know,

you're ready to make calls, whether it's me being lazy, whether, whether whatever it was like, you just added like 14 extra steps. Cause if it's, if it's a dud tree, it's not your problem. Oh yeah. Yeah. I would never make it to your, it would never make it. So you like, you, you vet it out like all of that by just, you know, but it's also the lazy man's way. And, and once we got into, you know, this, this idea, um, I'm going to say that I probably ate crow a little bit and decided it was an, it was an awesome idea and I'm glad I got, got to be a part of it. But, uh,

Your idea was to show this whole process. We would go cut the tree down. We were going to drive, you know, we didn't literally drive the truck in the trailer, but we followed the truck in the trailer with the log on it to the mill. Um, we pushed that, you know, bandsaw, you know, through the log, we made the decisions on the thickness of the log needed to be based on, you know, warp and splitting and all this stuff that was going to happen. Um, we made the decision on, on, you know, where this was going to go. And so this was, this was your, um, idea that we kind of ended up partnering on and, and make it happen. Um,

You know, and it was, we ended up kind of coining it the line one turkey call, but I just wanted to, to spend a day, you know, today's discussion and just kind of go over everything involved in this project, dive a little bit deeper and, and, you know, kind of see if we can, you know, explain that project a little more to the users, the listeners. Yeah. I want to, I want to touch a little bit on why I thought it was cool to do it. Yeah.

my old man was a big woodworker i'm not uh but he was very talented and he um he's born during the depression now you hear you know there's all these places to sell like recycled wood and all this kind of stuff and it's sort of like a thing but to me like the way he was it just seemed like very frugal you know he'd make knife handles with just junk he found laying around um

I remember he did a bunch of siding and barn board from barn board. He went and got from a barn. Uh, I remember they tore this brick building down and he got all the bricks and maybe my brothers chisel all the mortar off him so he could reuse the bricks. So he's just into that kind of stuff. But he built a cross when he, we built a pole barn ourselves on this piece of property that sat across the road from our house. And when we did that, we had to clear a couple of Oak trees out of the way.

And I remember we went through all the hassle of getting those oak trees to get them milled. And then getting all the planks and we just dried them in the garage. But getting all the planks and putting the stickers in and keeping them from warping and turning them all the damn time. And then he died. And I eventually got that wood. And...

Worked on it myself and just cut it all into strips and laminated it all into these big oak tops. And so my desk in my office is from those trees. Nice. And one of my smaller workbenches in my shop is made from those big pieces. And I just made these big slabs. They look like almost like a, I'm sure anybody can picture it. Big butcher block. Yeah, it looks like a butcher block or looks like you're looking at a bowling alley, whether it has a lane in a bowling alley.

So I kind of appreciated that stuff. And I thought that, like with Turkey Call, it'd just be interesting to see

what all goes into it, you know? Because before I did that, I didn't know about drying it and, you know, just, I don't know, the whole process, man. It was really instructional. Yeah, we're kind of, as we're recording this podcast, we're kind of coming down the finish line. Everything's in production. We're pretty damn excited about kind of what we're getting out of them. It's a really cool project. And one thing I want to...

You got to see kind of the picture of this tree that we picked out. We'll get into this a little bit more. But man, this wood's freaking beautiful. Compared to what you do get at the lumberyard versus what we got out of this tree, we're pretty excited about just a beautiful call. It's different than just your straight-grained walnut that you get from the lumberyard. I'm having a guy's making me a chef's knife.

And that's why I'm stealing a little piece of that because I'm going to have a chef's knife off it too. Yeah. We're getting those scales sent out to you today, actually, I think. But he wants a piece with a lot of character. Yeah. We're searching for some swirl and some edges and some crotches out of it. So we'll get you some good pieces. Yeah. I want the real, yeah, the crazy parts. Perfect. Perfect.

So the release of this line one kind of was hinged on the meat eater X Phelps release of turkey calls last year. We released a full line of calls, did very, very well. So some may ask, you know, and maybe we already answered this, is why would we do this line one turkey call? What's a need for a line one turkey call out there? And I'm going to see if you can answer that. Like, why do we need this call? Oh, because I think it'd just be, I don't know, if I had...

You know, you buy something, you get like a little thing with some pictures of, you know, whatever. You buy it, you get a catalog, I don't know, from whatever the hell company you like. And there's pictures of like the people making stuff and you kind of like meet who works there and you see everything. I was like, why not have, if you could have a call that you could refer to like a video that showed this walnut tree

grown in Kansas, I'll point out not far from Walnut, Kansas. And you can kind of like see every aspect of the tree in its context and have like drone footage of the tree dropping out of the canopy and then see the whole thing made. It would be like you like really understood every bit of it. The same way I think that one of the things I've always done with the stuff I make is we show an animal and then later we show things that came from it to eat.

And like people love seeing the transformation. So it's not like I would come and say like, you know, I don't have the technical expertise to come and be like, oh, there's something about the harmonics of this word. It's just like,

It's a cool thing to look and get a numbered, to get a numbered call where you know there's a finite number of calls that could come from a tree. Get like a video product showing everything about how it was made. And in the end, you're holding the thing. It'll be a great hunting tool. You're holding a thing and able to hunt with it. And you have its whole history right down to the location of where the stump is.

It's just like it's a fun thing. I think that anything that comes with sort of more awareness and knowledge. You know, I remember my mother-in-law had this floor in a house that was an old, the wood from a sheep shearing shed.

And it had all the lanolin like mixed in the, you could feel it on the wood. Right. I thought that was a cool ass floor because it's just like, there's like something about it. The story that went behind it. It's like, it just made it like cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's acceptable. In my office, I have a brick. Um, you'd look at it and think it was any old brick. It happens to be a brick that came from Jim Bridger's general store when it was dismantled.

anyone else to be like, he's got a red brick on his desk. I'd be like, this dude, not just any red brick. This is a special brick. That was from Jim Bridger's store, man. If I died and didn't tell anybody, no one would know. But it just has like a thing about it that gives it substance. So I think these calls have like, I don't know, it's cool, man. I'm going to have to borrow it one day off your desk. My brick? Yeah. Don't build it into something.

It's somewhere in this house. So we flew to Kansas shortly after the 4th of July with the intention. At that time, I believe the intention was just to cut a black walnut tree down. Went on the ground. We decided to also take an Osage orange, also known as Bodark, also known as hedge. Bodark. It's Boydark. It's like B-O-I-S.

apostrophe D, A-R-C. Like wood for making bows. Yeah, literally by definition, wood for bows. So we decided, hey, they got a bunch of hedge here just as well. They've got a great walnut tree. Can we talk about hedge for another second? Sure. These guys, I didn't realize it's about hedge. Makes a hell of a fence post. Oh yeah, never, it's like, lasts forever. And it's like a pretty fixed market value. And these guys we were with that owned this mill was like, if there's nothing else to do,

you can always make some money cutting hedge fence posts it's kind of like they're like talking about throughout their lives like various times when it's like you just can cut it you can get it from owners because it's it's otherwise not a high value tree um it's like always in the background and be like if you need to make a couple bucks you could always cut cut or cut boat art hedge fence posts you want another interesting fact about

fence post hedge. Like some of the, when the, the osage or the hedges uses a fence post for 60, 80, a hundred years. And it's able to like basically wick or absorb some of that mud. Some of that mud stained osage is like some of the highest value timber out there. Yeah. Like it's super sought out. So I'm going to start a business where I just go around and like replace old farmer's fence posts with like a piece of walnut. So I can grab that hedge post out. A fence post relocation business. Clay, uh,

Clay Newcomb says it outlasts the fencing. Yeah. It's amazing. It's just beautiful. It's almost like just the...

um, you know, the just streaks get sucked up into that hedge. And so you get like a really beautiful, you know, wood layup. So another little, um, let's rewind a little bit before we went and picked up, you know, the walnut and the osage. Like, how did we come? I think I, to the decision that we're going to do a pot and a striker. I know the answer. Cause I've talked to you a lot about what you use. Cause this is what I like. Yeah. Yeah. We had, we had the option to make box calls, you know, um,

um, you know, pot calls, you know, slotted, slotted pot calls. Like there's all these different ideas. And we said, we can do, you know, basically we can do anything within the tricky coal line. And, and, uh, you know, Steve's like, we're going with a pot. I carry, I've carried around box calls for the first time ever went in the woods with a turkey calls a box call. And I mean, I remember this, like, I remember knowing so little that we'd be out and forget the chalk. And I remember sitting there with a leather man trying to pulverize sandstone, uh,

To rub. I'm not joking. Pulverized sandstone in sort of a makeshift mortar and pestle as a way to try to chalk the box. But here's the thing with me. Let's say you got your turkey vest on. You got everything in your freaking turkey vest, right? You got your diaphragms. You got your box. You got a pot and peg. You got whatever the hell else. Your little hands. Whatever device you got. If I all of a sudden am walking down a road

Okay. Walking down a farm lane and pow, the gobbler gobble 75 yards away. I, in that situation, I always, always grab the pot. Yep. I think everybody, I think it's just like, I'm like, if I'm going to kill this bird, this is what I'm going to do. Yeah. And I, in that situation, I bet you 99.9% hunters aren't going to their box call, you know, and that, so I think they got more utility. They get used a lot more. Um, so I just have like more, um,

yeah man let's have more faith that it's enjoyable for me to do it too like i enjoy that you know yeah i enjoy messing with one and i know that like when i pull it out i'm gonna like get what i want from it yep you know yeah um and i see like you know i got a friend one of the best turkey hunters i know uh robert abernathy he's been on the show with us he's like a turkey biologist been hunting turkeys for a

All over the place, right? He's hunting turkeys in 27 states, something like that. And man, that dude can locate turkeys with a box. Yep. Like, he's got a signature locating these just loud, aggressive cuts. And you're almost kind of like, when he does it, you're almost like, he's really? But then off in the distance, pow!

Yeah. You know? Yeah. There's, that's what frustrates me. There's days, um, I remember my wife's first turkey, um, would not answer anything else. And it pisses me off because I'm, I'm a good diaphragm caller. I'm a good on a pot call. I'm good on an owl, you know, crow. And then he'd only answer this damn box call. Back in the day, I was using like the, I think the Primo's heartbreaker, you know? Yeah. So I was just cranking on it and nothing answered. And I literally had to like,

box call him all the way into shotgun range because he would not answer any other call. So it was just, it was, you know, I'm glad I had it in the turkey vest, but it was just one of those things. Like there are times where it works, you know, on windy mornings, you know, or just like a dense foggy morning where sound isn't traveling. When Abernathy gets a strike, when he gets a strike off that box call though, you know, the first thing he does? What's that? Puts the box call away. Yeah. That was, it was a little bit. And then he's heading in that direction, man. He like, the box call goes away. It's not coming back out. And he's like, phew.

Head that way. So we fly into...

Kansas City, Missouri. We drive a little ways. I think it was about an hour and a half. And we decided on Union Town, Kansas is where we're going to cut this tree down. And I'd like to tell some big story on why, but it was really, I had a good buddy, Randy Milligan, who I got to hunt with last spring. I think we'd advertised on a podcast, like, hey, we're looking for somebody with a tree. And then I think I got like 40 or 50. Oh, really? Yeah, 40 or 50 emails that came from Corey. Yeah.

uh, Calkins here at the meat eater, like everybody offering up their tree. And it's just, you know, it just didn't have the right feel. You know, you're like, you gotta come to somebody. Is it going to be the right tree? Is it kind of pre-scouted? And, uh, my good buddy, Randy had reached out and said, Hey, I got, I got hedge. I've got, you know, all kinds of black walnut hickory. You know, he, he owns quite a bit of property there on Uniontown, Kansas. And, uh, I think I shot you a message. You know, yeah, that'll work. Um, and it's no small thing to give away a walnut tree because, um,

Or to offer one up, because one thing we learned about is you can have an expensive damn... Oh, yeah. I mean, it takes like a perfect... There's... I don't understand it well enough, but a veneer grade walnut where they're taking off like paper thin concentric circles. Yep.

off of a walnut and when you get one of those and there's no branches and no blemishes you can have a tree that's worth thousands and thousands of dollars yeah i mean i don't remember the exact number he had mentioned while we were there like his neighbor just sold like a black walnut for ten thousand dollars or something yeah it was because it was it was there's a they're building a bank and the bank wanted walnut veneer on the walls of the bank in certain conference rooms and stuff but they wanted it all to match all like but yeah so they had to find they wanted like one walnut

And when you take that veneer off what we're talking about, I remember someone saying that someone handed us a business card.

And it felt like a pretty heavy duty business card. It was a business card. Yep. And wasn't it like three or four layers laminated together? It's thin. Yeah. Yeah. I think Joe, the mill, the owner of the mill handed us a business card, you know, because being a mill guy, you got to have a business card made out of veneer. But yeah, he told us like veneer thinner than this. Yeah. And it was, it was like a few of them, but anyways, so when they finally found like the tree that you could do the whole damn bank.

In it. Yes. Valuable tree, man. Yeah. Half of like half of a,

Half of a truck, half of a used truck nowadays. So we kind of scouted the property. Randy kind of pre-scouted a little bit for us. There were some options he had, but we went there, settled on a pretty good straight black walnut. We'll talk here in a little bit about kind of as we look at the tree, kind of how many... You're looking at that tree like that's a thousand pot calls worth. We weren't looking at it like...

you know, what else we're going to get out of it or what value we have. Yeah, I kept thinking how many are hiding in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we cut down. It'd be like looking at a chicken and being like, how many dry flies are in that chicken? Yep. And that chicken sped. Found a good Osage orange and then me with this, like, I'm going to blame it on their technique. This whole eastern,

like sawing technique that I split the wood in half. Crazy ass sawing technique. Yeah, we won't get into that. So I wasted our first hedge. Well, but are you going to explain the technique and why they do it? Yeah, yeah, we'll get into that a little bit more. So I wasted one osage. We went to another one that actually probably ended up being a better option that was right next to it. Got it, fell. Yeah, you barber chaired it. Yeah, yeah.

I'm blaming on their technique. Like I'm from the, I'm from the coastal rainforest where we cut trees way different than this technique. I never cut a tree like that. I was scared out working on a big tree like that. I was scared because I was in unknown territory. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were just kind of relying on them a little bit to walk us through the technique. Um, so then we loaded these trees up on a big, uh, flatbed and we shipped them about an hour South to Walnut, Kansas, where we spent the next day, um,

milling these logs up to our specs. We knew we needed five quarters for some warping and some splitting as these dried on the pallet and then as they dried in the kiln. So we set everything up to what we needed to build our ultimate pot calls out of. I like to point out that was Walnut, Kansas. It was. We processed the walnut in Walnut, Kansas. And I can't think about that day without thinking about the chiggers though because we were like way dialed. When we were out cutting the trees,

You know, I did all the, everything you're supposed to do. I like did like permethrin on my clothes. I like pulled my pants down, did my waistline and ankles and deep, like everything as textbook. They were like, well, we're going to the mill, you know? And I'm, when I'm picturing the mill, I don't know. I'm picturing like being in a building with a concrete floor. So I got like sneakers on, like don't do anything. And I get to the, the mill is like,

you know, out in the field. Yeah. Yeah. Just like equipment out in the field and had no idea, dude, I suffered for weeks after that. I got lit up and I had them little baby ticks all over my calf. It was, yeah, it wasn't good. No. Um, I'll always think of that. I can't like think of, I honestly, I won't be able to look at these calls and I'll feel a little itchy. So everybody that gets one of these things, they should feel a little itchy when they pick them. Like we, we got tore up for these calls. Yeah, man.

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So we're out in the woods looking at these trees. I just want to explain a little bit. You know, there are board foot calculations I know as the call designer. Like when I go in to build a call, I need about 0.2 board feet per call. You know, and just to go over the board foot calculation for everybody that doesn't know, we're looking at however many inches thick this board is by however many inches wide the board is.

by how long it is in feet, and then we'll divide it by 12. And you ultimately get like 144 cubic inches makes a board foot. So if I called someone, I still am not totally clear on this. If I called a vendor and said, I want you to send me one board foot,

Of walnut. Yep. I would get in the mail what? You would have to, they would then ask you, how do you want that board foot? Do you want it in four quarters by four inches wide? Do you want it in four quarters by six inches wide? Do you want it in six quarters by, and then your length would then depend on like how much you, you know, how long it was would depend on the, the, the width and the thickness of that board. But the volume.

The volume of what I'm getting doesn't change. Nope. Nope. You can get one board foot in a perfect square block or you can get one board foot in like a board. I got you. So yeah, it's just a measurement of volume. I see. So we kind of knew that going in. And then, you know, we got some- Oh yeah, you know why I'm confused about that now? Now I remember. You knew the thickness. Yep.

So, all right. I knew I needed... I was always visualizing a board foot and what you were talking about, but I wasn't thinking that, let's say you had to make a thing that was three inches thick, then your whole... He damn sure not better send you a board that's one inch thick. Yep, yep. So we knew we needed a five quarter by a four inch board. That's right. As our blank. And then the length just needed to be enough to get...

you know, uh, you know, all those calls. Then we could basically divide that by the point. Cause the, cause the end in the end, the call is how thick the call ends up being right at just a hair over three quarters of an inch thick. And you go over by how much? Um, so we went five quarters. So we were actually cutting these boards to a true dimensional 1.25. And that was the account for all the warp. Um, we have to plan all of these. And even on some of these boards, we got off, we're going to actually lose a call at the end of the boards because by the time we plan them, they got too thin. Huh? So it's just, that's why we had to be so you're literally giving up a half an inch, um,

you know, on the board that's going to go to waste while you're milling it compared to what we're going to get out of the, out of the board. But when you buy it from like Joe's lumber, you buy it the same way? Well, we'll buy it four quarters in because it's clean. Already been milled. Yeah. We know that it's going to be perfectly straight and we won't have any waste on that. I see. So part of that was just knowing you're getting into like a. Yep. Yeah. We're not buying that. You're going to have to grade it yourself. Yep. Yep.

Um, you know, so we were doing a lot of, you know, all of the, the, the measurements are like, we brought Seth along to help us, you know, forestry degree. And, but a lot of the dimensions are just taken at what's called breast height, you know, so a normal human's about four and a half feet.

um, their breast height, you, you take a measurement on what they think that diameter is. You know, those, some of the guys that were working with us there, they're so experienced. They kind of just hugged the tree, kind of figured out, well, I think that's about a 24 incher. And then you can kind of go to a chart, you know, there's two different dimensions. There's like a Doyle chart and then there's like a quarter inch chart. And that kind of gives you an idea of how many board feet do you think they're going to get based on like a 16 foot straight section? Yeah. And those, those dudes we were with that deal in a lot of lumber,

They're also looking at the big limbs. Yeah. And they just kind of, that's just like seriously eyeballing, but he's just looking up in the tree and being like, oh, X more. Yeah. That limb, that limb's probably nothing. Yeah. Or if they had a curve to them, like even when that dries, the board's just going to go completely crazy and it's not going to be usable anyways. You know, so they were, they were walking through all that or that limb's 10 feet long. Yeah. I forgot that too. Like,

Depending on the limb's length and how it was oriented to the tree, he would gauge like how it's going to dry. Yeah. And he'd be like, you're going to have a mess. Yeah. Because that limb will be a mess. I mean, you got to think of that limb as basically like a big diving board, right? So the bottom side of that tree is half into, you know, it's under a bunch of stress compared, or the top side of the tree's in tension, the bottom's in compression, you know? So you're trying to, you know, think of when that board dries, it's going to want to settle out and it's going to get all warped and messed up. You know what? I was down in the...

When I was down in South America, they have a lot of those buttressed, those big jungle trees that have like the buttressed roots. Yep. And some of these buttressed roots, you could cut a tabletop out of them. It's huge. I mean, it's like you're standing at the tree and the buttress, which looks like a descending ridge line, coming off the tree is taller than you. And it looks like it's like positioned to sort of like block the tree up. But they're explaining that that's a cable cable.

pulling on that tree. Yeah. It's just like a, it's not reinforced. It's not like, it's not like it up. Yeah. It's not like a, I guess building a retaining wall. Yeah. It's,

It's pulling it down. That thing's going to try to get it back where it should be. Yeah. Yeah. That makes like kind of like logging with the big yard or all those cables just kind of pulling, pulling that thing into being straight up. Exactly. Um, next I want to get into like the crazy way they, they taught us to cut these trees down and we kind of just, you know, when you're in, when you're in their ballpark, you play by their rule.

Oh, yeah. So, you know, I came in from, I live in maybe the timber capital of the world there in Southwest Washington. You know, a bunch of, come from a long lineage of tree fallers. And we show up and I think there was some wind damage or a big storm right before we got there. And they actually had to cut a tree down before we got there. Oh, they had junk laying everywhere, yeah. Yeah, and they kind of,

I think I kind of stood there and kind of got out of the way, but kind of watched and like, what in the hell are they doing? It's zero, because they're dealing with high dollar hardwoods. Yeah, so I mean that- They have a zero waste cut. Yeah, their stump is literally flush with the ground. And they don't knock a-

They don't knock a wedge out. No, just because you'd be throwing away a hundred bucks. I don't know. Yep. They put a little teeny face cut in, just a little one. Remember we had just. But I mean, it's like they, you're losing a saw width. Yep. And they core. So. You always have to make like a diagram. Yeah. So scary. I didn't, I felt scary doing that. So I'll do my best to describe it and you can add some details. We cut a small face cut into the direction we wanted the tree to fall.

And normally after you cut your larger face cut in like a Douglas fir tree around home, you then come in from the backside of the log and, and steer your saw perfectly square to that direction. And you approach your, your holding wood. Um, I can't remember if you're up, you know, a little high or whatever, but you approach your, your wood until the tree starts to tip and you get out of there. Well, here we cut our face notch in a lot shallower, um,

Um, down in the dirt. Yeah. More offset towards the way you want. And then you came directly behind the holding wood and you dog the nose of your saw in and left that one inch. So now you've basically got your saw stuck through the center of the tree and

whole you know notch let's say to the right and then you saw your way out the back side of the tree and hollow the whole thing out yeah and then when you get to the end they want you to kind of work a little bit quick and just kind of zip through and then the tree falls yeah so you got yeah that's a good way of putting it you got a face cut you got a gap of wood then the whole damn tree's gone and you got the other face just barely holding on and you just nick that thing yep

And then the tree fell. It's a clean cut. It worked. Yeah. And I mean, they literally, you know, at home we, we leave a two foot stump, you know, so you go to a clear cut and there's all these damn stumps everywhere. Um, this thing's like, if, if somebody didn't tell you, you're walking through the wood, there's a tree cut down over there. I mean, you wouldn't know it was there. It's flush. Drive lawnmower over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was flush. So it was a kind of cool little way that they showed us. And like I said, we were in their arena. That's how they were comfortable cutting trees down. So I know how people can, I know how people can learn what we're talking about. They don't need a diagram. The video. They can watch damn video. Yeah.

Man, that tree you fell. I got, I had 50 ticks on my hand when I went to reach for that damn camera. They were everywhere. Um, yeah.

So then we took them down to the mill. We'll fast forward to that. Loaded them up with skid steers, you know, loaders, all of that. Got them chained down on the trailer. Yeah, we kind of bucked it into just whatever natural. We didn't buck it to length. No, we bucked it to points where we were going to, you know, things were getting curvy or we were going to start to lose, you know, to limbs and whatnot. Just what made sense for good lumber. And then we moseyed on down the next morning to Walnut, Kansas, down to the mill.

Big-ass bandsaw out in the field. Yep, yep. And so we loaded, I think, walnut on first. You know, they take their cuts. They start to see what we're actually – you know, you don't know what you got until you start to open up the wood. And we could tell right away it was going to be, you know, really pretty wood. And so we started loading the walnuts up, got those all cut at five quarters. New for an Osage, you know, based on different woods, Osage is really, really hard. It's got, like, a specific gravity of 0.8, so it's really heavy. Matter of fact, I think I've seen a statistic. It's got, like, one of the highest –

like BTU ratings, like for firewood, like it's going to burn the hottest. So it's got the most energy stored up in it. So it's a real dense, one of the reasons it makes an absolute amazing striker. So we cut that at four quarters, knowing that a striker was going to end up being, you know, right at three quarters of an inch on an osage by my designs. And so we milled the osage up at four quarters, milled the walnut up at five quarters, and then kind of just told them, you know, what the optimum boards to ship to the,

the kiln was going to be. Yeah. I want to, I want to add a thing quick about these dudes that we milled with. They used to have, there was an old gas well on their property and the gas well went dry, but it has still has natural gas in it. They had their, they had rigged up where they were pulling gas. They were pulling natural gas like next to their mill. And then they had a natural gas, uh,

whatever the hell we call it, saw. Yep. They converted this old tractor engine to burn natural gas and that powered their old mill. Yeah. And they had like a totally self-contained unit. And then I think about the old mill, like I just, I sit there and kind of scratch my head and then I kind of walk away like, man, these guys just do what they need to do. Like they had this old tractor motor that was

the drive train was hooked to an old rubber tire and that's what fed the logs. They pulled a lever of a spinning rubber tire that would spit the log to engage the blade. Yeah, that would engage the blade and then it spun the log to your arm just like, this can't be like OSHA approved. No, if you looked around a while, I think you'd find some limbs. Ha ha ha.

You'd be like, oh, there's a thumb bone. Yeah. But I kind of like that. I mean, I don't know if, hopefully that comes out in the story, but like this is the way that some of this stuff gets done. Like just real, you know, down to earth people running mills out in their backfield. Yeah. That's how you get some of this lumber. Shipped it to a kiln. We decided to ship the green lumber, meaning wet, no drying at all. The green lumber got put on a semi truck and shipped to Addy, Washington, where we had it shipped to a kiln.

Um, the nice thing about a kiln. So if I was to just take those, those boards that we milled up and say, we wax the ends so we can control the way that the board actually dried out. We don't want the board to dry out the ends. We want the board to draw out like on its, its face of a surface. So it doesn't crack. So you'd wax or paint the ends of the board, let it dry. We usually say that it takes about a year per inch of thickness. So we just don't have that kind of time. Right.

So you, we use these kilns to speed up this process. Oh, that's natural. That's Andy. Yeah. So if I was just to throw it in a, in a shop and put little dunnage, you know, little spacer sticks in between it. So air can get all around it. It's going to take a year an inch. Um, we didn't have that kind of time. Well, is the kiln a different quality of drying or is it just, you wind up with the same thing? You still end up, I mean, ultimately our optimum moisture content is around seven to 8%. So I need. You're landing in the same place. I need that moisture content. So that board is done moving at the time we put a drill bit, a.

you know, a mill, a lathe, anything to it, any of the process, that board's not going to move or warp on us anymore. So we're shooting for 8%. Now what the kiln does is you put a bunch of steam vapor in there. So you're actually adding moisture to the situation, but then you can draw that moisture down in like a controlled process. So you don't get all the splitting and warping as much. You can control that a lot more by basically bringing up the moisture to what the board has and then slowly inside of a controlled environment, pull that out.

Um, not to bore everybody with that process. It's just, it took us about six weeks to get our, um, Osage and Walnut down to that seven and 8%. And then from there, we have to look at these boards that we now have ranging anywhere from eight to 12 inches and kind of pick out what's going to give us our best boards. If we need two, four inch strips, some of it's going to go to waste anyway. So we're kind of looking, evaluating the boards where checks were soft spots, where knots, you know, entered into that board. And we kind of just go back and we're kind of

doing our best to kind of grade the lumber or kind of cherry pick what we want out of it. So where you're at now, how many do you think were hiding in that tree? So we think, and we, you know, with a...

I'm going to give some of our tips away or tricks, but we're completely transparent on this process. We think we can get about 1,450 pots. Oh, really? We're going to say we're shooting for- So we're doing better than our- We're doing way better than our goal of that we wanted a tree with 1,000 in it. Yep. So I think we're going to be around 1,400, and that's to give us 50 extras. Because along the process-

If you have a tool catch, you know, a pot, it blows up. Well, you're like, well, all right, number 1,342 is missing. You know, like we got to replace it. And so you got to kind of shoot for a number lower than what you have.

And then my knife handle. Yeah, we keep getting these damn requests for knife handles and stuff that are cut. No, that's going to be an extra. That's just basically going to be scrap. So we're shooting for 1400. And what that's going to end up giving us, and we haven't talked about it a lot, we've decided on a pure crystal surface. So not glass. We went pure crystal over a Pennsylvanian slate tone board inside of the walnut pot. And then we're going to have a one piece custom Osage orange striker. Wow.

One piece one piece. No, we ended up being able to make that happen after a lot a lot of I'm like come on pressures on guys like you need to just like so there's times where I'm not gonna lie super inefficient to like literally run We take a one by one one inch by one inch piece of Osage run it through a doweling machine So it basically spits out a broom handle, but normally you want to get like three to four foot broom handles We're getting 16 inch broom handle. That's just to get one more striker out of out of the board. Oh

But do you think you're going to be able to match it in strikers? Yeah, that's where we... You'll get the number. The concern with the lower number was if we were to just... If this was mass production and efficiency and time was involved...

We wouldn't have got that many, but since we said, all right, let's throw the efficiency away and just go hunt for every single striker and every piece of Osage we have, they were able to go like pull these ones and twos out of boards where we would normally scrap and just say it's worth burning. Yeah. So when you, when you watch the video, you'll see the Osage too. Yep. Yep. You'll see where it came from. So we've got that all packed. I mean, just everything we're doing on this is the, like Steve said earlier, just create an experience to go along with that pot calling. And I think when everybody kind of sees the end product,

they're going to agree like there isn't a pot call with you know this much thought put into anything as far as even the dang packaging that we decided to come up with just you know everything from top to bottom on this is we didn't you know we didn't spare any expenses in the process tried to make just a real one off you know the art on the call is going to be you know kind of one off nobody else did this again so I'm really excited. That's beautiful man. Yeah it turned out great. I mean the whole thing is beautiful and tell people when they're going to be done.

These line one calls should be available right now at TheMeatEater.com. You know the term line one? There's a line of cattle that they've been researching for a long time. It's called like the line one Hereford. And I always like that. It always made me wonder about the line two Hereford. Yeah, I mean. I don't know where it is. But somewhere think about. I was like, no, it's the first one. It's the line one. Yeah. No, I love the name when you kind of.

I think we were in Kansas when you brought that up. I don't see any, I don't have any objections to that name. And, you know, for a while there, we'd kind of like, kind of coined it, treat a turkey. Since our intention at the end of this is for me and you to hopefully go back there one of these years, whenever our schedules line up and kill a turkey. From the stump. On that property. You don't like this part, but I think I'm going to do it from the stump. You're going to sit on that stump? I'm going to sit on that stump. I love it. So, I mean, a funny story, I hung out with Randy this year. I literally killed my turkey within minutes.

No more than a quarter mile from where the walnut and osage was cut down. Turkeys have definitely walked under that tree. Yeah, yeah. It's a good piece of property. Randy does a good job there. He's got a lot of turkeys. ♪

All right, we went a little bit long there on the line one discussion, but what this podcast is meant to do is bring you tips and tactics, and we don't want to leave without asking Steve a question to kind of get some of his input on one of these questions. So I'm going to pose a situation for Steve. You're in an area with good bird numbers, all kinds of good turkey habitat. You know, you've got a good mix of ag, roost trees, feed, cover, everything a turkey needs, nesting,

Um, but the state you're hunting only lets you get a tag that's good for two hours of the day. So you're going to have to pick your time, whether you want to be from. I like the state. It's an interesting state. Yeah. So it's, you know, you can pick a time from, let's say roost to seven 30, whatever it is. Um, what time are you going to choose? Nine to 11. Nine to 11. Yeah. Can you give me. Maybe 10, no nine to 11. I was vacillating between 10 to 12 and nine, nine to 11. Here's the thing.

If you got to be there since daybreak, like I don't like going out late. You hear about people that get older and they just get up, eat breakfast and go in the woods. Like I like to be there as part of the package to be there from dawn. I like to be there at daybreak. I want to hear him on the trees. I like all that. But there's a thing that happens where if I'm sitting there in the dark and I hear a turkey, I don't have overwhelming confidence that I'm going to kill that turkey. But there's something about 10 a.m.

You're half thinking about taking a nap, you know? Yep. And you haven't heard anything in a couple hours. It's been pretty slow. And at 10 a.m. all of a sudden, pow! I always get like, we're going to kill that bird. Yeah, yeah. That bird, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I mean. He's like done doing, like when he came out of the tree, he had like an agenda. He's like got his hands. He's going to some specific spot.

whatever he's going to, whatever he's going to do. He just, they seem to oftentimes like they, they know what they're going to do when they get out of bed. Yep. And then it gets late morning and they seem to enter. There's fact there's variables like what, where they're at in the breeding cycle and nesting and all that.

but you get birds that they get to be around that time of day. And also it's like, he's got free time. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And when he hammers off there, you're like, he probably doesn't have a hand with him, you know, or if he does, he's not, he's like, now what am I going to do? I don't feel like, uh, I don't feel like just laying around dusting. I feel still got a little spunk. Yeah. And he sounds off and I get real excited. Yeah. And that's,

You know, so you're saying, if I could paraphrase, you'd be a spectator. You'd still go out. You just wouldn't carry your shotgun from daylight to 930. Oh, that's how I would handle it. You're still going to go out there for that experience, but you're going to walk back to your truck at 10 and grab your gun. I'd check the regs. I'd check the regs and make sure it was okay for me to just go listen.

And then I'd go back and get my gun. No, I'd go get my gun at 9 o'clock because I wanted to be ready for 10 o'clock. Okay. So you're trying to hit it like prime in the middle there. Yeah, I might even take a little nap. I might take a nap. I might take a 20-minute nap from like at 9.10, sleep to 9.30, and then get ready for my 10 a.m. gotcha. Because this question stemmed from me being –

a young turkey hunter, high school. I would bomb, jump in my car, bomb over to Eastern Washington where we had all the turkeys and go. And we were up two hours before daylight, hiking in, we wanna sit under the tree, we'd watch those birds for a day or two do this, and you'd go set up thinking you're in there. You'd never kill them off the damn roost. I don't know if it's 'cause I accidentally made a noise.

um, screwed them up. No matter what I can pattern turkeys for 20 days in a row, do the same thing. And I sit under that tree on the 21st day and they will not do what I need them to do to kill them. I don't know what it is. I don't know if they've got like a sensor. Maybe it's cause I can't keep my damn call to myself. Why they got a tracking device on you. Um,

But the old timers there used to say, we'll let you young bucks get up and get the turkeys all ready for us. We're going to sleep in. We're going to eat a good breakfast. When you guys are now taking a nap or coming in to eat breakfast or lunch, we're going to go out and kill the turkeys. We're going to come out and kill all your turkeys. Well, the real old timers would go out at night and crawl in under the tree. So yeah, it's curious. I think I'm with you, especially as it gets later April, early May, at least where I hunt. That midday is just kind of...

you know, that, that, like you said, that's the bird that when it gobbles, you're like, we got this one. Yeah. Um, no, I like it. I like it. So Steve, why we've got you here before we close, if you had any tip or tactic that you can give to a new Turkey hunter to maybe help them find some success, like what's the most important thing is a new Turkey hunter, um, that you would, you'd share, you know, you'd care to share with them. Uh, yeah, man.

It's so hard because what I want to say, like everything has exceptions. Yep. What I want to say is developing the ability until you start learning turkey behavior, develop the ability to control your impulses. Like you're going to make a, you're going to make more as a beginning turkey hunter. You're going to make more mistakes of moving too soon and being too aggressive early on. You're going to move too soon to be too aggressive and bump too many turkeys. Yep.

Later, when you start learning a lot more, you'll learn just how aggressive you can be. But things might not happen as quick as you want them to happen. And if you've got a bird and you're calling to it and working it and he leaves...

Um, learning when it's like, man, I would go in that direction, but I can tell by how loud the leaves are by how open the country is. There's just no way. Yeah. I'm going to get up and he's going to see me. Yep. Um, so early on be like, I don't know. Admit yourself. I don't know a ton about birds yet.

Every part of me wants to get up, but I also know that me, that I'm being, I'm probably going to blow it and just be a little more patient until you get good enough and you've watched enough turkeys to start being a little more adventurous. Yep. But I screwed up a lot by going too hard. And then there he is staring at you.

Yep. Yeah. So cautious, patience, a little more as a beginner until you kind of learn, you know, what you can get away with and what you can't.

I shouldn't do this, but I know that right now it's okay. Yep. And one thing, I mean, what you're saying is in order to learn that though, you're going to bump birds. I mean, even with being cautious, I think Steve's telling you to be a little bit extra cautious. Like err on the side of not moving. But then to ultimately learn what you can and can't get away with, you're going to have to bump birds somewhere down the line. But to start with, just like you say, be a little more reserved.

I really appreciate having you here, Steve. So what we're going to say is go check out TheMeatEater.com somewhere on or around the 24th. Yep. Line one turkey call. A really cool experience. Like I say, I kind of joke with Steve as I thought his idea wasn't great and I didn't like it to begin with, but I became a believer about halfway through the process and I'm really excited to see this through.

If you had to pick one time and you wanted to maybe see Steve out in the turkey woods under a tree, you're going to want to go between nine and 11 because that was a time that Steve picked for being out there as far as notching his turkey tag on a turkey.

And other than that, if you're a new turkey hunter, maybe be a little more cautious until you kind of get the turkeys figured out what you can get away with and what you can't. As a friend of mine put it, when you feel like doing something, don't. Thanks a lot, Steve. All right. Thanks, man.

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